<b>"Bradshaw was a famously charming man, and his lounge-lizard urbanity fully suffuses his prose. This new anthology is a necessary book for all men and women of letters." ¿Martin Amis </b><br>A collection of magazine writer Jon Bradshaw¿s essential writings, <i>The Ocean is Closed</i> rediscovers a memorable talent, and offers us a shadow reality to the established literary canon of the mid-century. With droll wit and keen intelligence, Bradshaw¿s cinematic prose brings the ¿70s to vibrant life¿from the lurid pick-up scenes at hotspots like Maxwell¿s Plum in New York, and the Beverly Hills Hotel in L.A., to full-bodied portraits of literary figures such as W.H. Auden and Tom Stoppard; affectionate profiles of hustlers and con men such as Bobby Riggs and Minnesota Fats, to chilling reportage about street gangs in the Bronx, terrorism in Germany, and mercenary freedom fighters in India.<br>Jon Bradshaw, a man of tremendous personal charm, good humor and rugged beauty, was a literary co